How Many People Have Ever Lived?

Abstract

Can the total number of people who have ever lived on the Earth be estimated in some reasonable way? This fascinating question has been the subject of a number of papers, the first by Winkler [15], others by Deevey [3], Desmond et al [4], Keyfitz [7], and the most recent by Westing [13]. Curiously enough, the two-page article by Keyfitz and the estimate obtained therein found their way into the Information Please Almanac [6] under the title “How Many Earth People Have There Been?”

Keywords

World Population Exponential Curve Average Life Expectancy Initial Population Size Ultimate Extinction

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.